A moment of silence

Well, it seems there was a great deal of shooting here today for the men from the house were out above three hours with their guns this morning. As is usual in these places, shooting is very much the order of the day and the gentlemen regard the birds as a kind of enemy army upon which they must wage a continual war. However, they are quite sure that there can have been no accident, for they were at the top of Cooper’s Spinney and there is the hill and the Greek Temple and the ha-ha too between there and the shrubbery.

We understand that the body was not to be seen at nine o’clock this morning when two of the gardeners were on the very spot trimming the laurels, and no strangers are known to have come to the house. No one from the house set foot in the shrubbery all day. I do not believe that this is much of a walking household. The Misses Harris are too much engaged in being accomplished to take a great deal of exercise and their mother must save all her breath to gossip with. Catherine, as you know, lost her taste for gardens when she lost her taste for dirt. Lady Montague does, I understand, usually walk out in the shrubbery at about three, but today she was indisposed and spent the whole morning in her dressing room.

And, by the by, this isolation of her ladyship did arouse the delightful fancy in my mind that perhaps she had found from somewhere the energy to creep out into the shrubbery with one of her husband’s shotguns and commit murder. However, I was obliged to abandon this intriguing idea when I discovered that her maid was with her all the time and the footman visited her repeatedly to take, at different times, logs for her fire, a letter and chocolate.

So, the main point is that no one has been able to give any information about what happened. The constable was here above an hour and searched the shrubbery with enthusiasm; but, finding no murderer concealed among the laurels, he has gone away again declaring that it is a mighty strange business and he ‘never saw the like of it before, and that’s a fact!’

And now Sir Edgar, who is the magistrate here, has told the coroner, Mr Fallows, that an inquest must be held – which will be of great interest to the whole neighbourhood, I don’t doubt, for no one can remember when there was last an inquest held here. Poor Catherine. I would hope that such an event, terrible though it is, might at least serve to divert the gossips from her sad affair; but with the woman dying within the very grounds of this house, I fear it may only fix their minds upon her. And…

She stopped and this time decided that the smoothness of the page must be sacrificed. She scratched out the last word. Some things were best left unsaid and her fear that the idle chatter of the neighbourhood might connect this dreadful event with Catherine’s disappointment was one of them.

She did not want to think that such a connection was possible.

She finished her letter with a hasty promise to write again as soon as there was more to tell, and blew out her candle – for she was a thrifty woman and wax candles were too costly to be wasted. Then she turned to the hearth where – even though this was the smallest and humblest of all the guest bedrooms in the house – there was a fire burning. It was but a small grate, and a small fire, giving little light and throwing long shadows from the old bed-curtains and turning the cloak and bonnet hanging on their peg behind the door into a hunched little fairy-story witch. But it was a fire nonetheless and a fire in a bedroom was a wonderful luxury. Dido held her hands to it gratefully as she turned matters over in her mind.

It was Catherine that she worried about. Which did not seem quite right with that unfortunate woman lying dead somewhere out in the stables. But, she reflected, it was really very hard to care for someone you did not know. One tried, of course – it was a Christian duty to show compassion for all God’s creatures; but the truth was that a dead woman without a name was more a puzzle than a grief. And Catherine’s anguish was much more immediate. After all, Catherine had asked for her help; she would not be here at all – she would have known nothing about the dead woman – if her niece had not asked for her.

Or ‘summoned’ her, as she had said herself to Eliza when she first received the letter.

For an invitation to Sir Edgar Montague’s country seat would most certainly not have found its way to Miss Dido Kent at Badleigh Cottage if the woman that Sir Edgar’s only son was engaged to had not demanded her presence.

Catherine had told her father, ‘I want Aunt Dido.’ The invitation had been requested, and Francis had sent off an express informing his sister of the precise hour at which the carriage would be at the door to bring her here. No one, least of all Dido herself, had considered that she might refuse to come. For family was family, she loved her niece dearly and, besides, since Francis paid as large a share of her allowance as any of her other brothers, he considered, like the rest of them, that her time was entirely at his disposal when it came to illnesses, lyings in, funerals, house removals or, as in this case, wayward daughters.

Catherine has always been difficult, he had written, and now, when she is at last to make us proud of her, I would not have anything go wrong through one of her strange fits of temper. This morning she has done nothing but weep and shut herself away from us all. You must talk to her, Dido, and, if there is any danger at all of her breaking off this engagement, get her to see sense. Make her see how foolish she would be to give up such an alliance.

Alarmed for her niece’s happiness, Dido had travelled in some uneasiness. It was a wretched journey and the final stage, enlivened as it had been by the company of Margaret, Catherine’s stepmother, was the worst part of all. For in between a lecture on Sir Edgar’s extreme wealth and a minute description of Belsfield and its grounds which encompassed almost the history of every window in the house and every tree in the parkland, Margaret repeated very determinedly, ‘She must not give up this engagement. I tell you, she must not!’

But, on arriving at the Hall, Dido had quickly discovered that Catherine had no thoughts of ending her engagement. The difficulty lay in quite a different quarter.

‘I think,’ Catherine had wailed tearfully within minutes of the two of them being alone together, ‘I think that he does not love me any longer.’

And then, before the distressed Dido could say a word about the danger of holding a man to a promise when his affection was lost, the girl had contradicted herself.

‘But he does love me,’ she sobbed. ‘I know he does. It is only…’

‘Only what, my dear?’

‘Only that he has taken a foolish idea into his head about it being better if we part.’

‘But why should he do that?’

‘I don’t know!’ Catherine thrust out her bottom lip, reminding Dido irresistibly of the three-year-old Catherine who, on the death of her mother, had been entrusted to the inexpert care of her young aunts. She used to look very much like this whenever they had had to drag her from rolling about and making mud pies in the garden to be scrubbed and presented to company in the parlour.

‘I don’t know,’ repeated Catherine, her blue eyes shining through her tears and her curls trembling with every little sob. ‘That’s what you have got to find out for me, Aunt.’ She mopped at her eyes and gave the smile which she had learnt could usually get her whatever she wanted. ‘You’re so clever. I know you can do it.’

The fire was burning low. Sighing deeply over the task she had been set, Dido bent to replenish the grate from the basket which was piled high with logs.

It was a curious fact that just at that moment Colonel Walborough, far away at the front of the house in the grandeur of the very best guest chamber, was reaching into his log basket and finding it empty. As he went shivering and cursing to his cold bed, the colonel would have been mortified to learn that the shabby little maiden aunt whom he had not thought worth talking to at dinner was comfortably toasting her toes before her fire, secure in the knowledge that there were two hot, flannel-wrapped bricks warming her small bed. But then, Colonel Walborough had had woodcock to kill today; he had not been able to spend any portion of his valuable time in talking to the housemaids, or administering cough mixture to the footman, or writing a letter for the kitchen maid to send to her brother in the army.

Dido had long ago learnt the trick of being comfortable in a great country house, and she usually enjoyed her visits to them very much indeed. But this time things looked bad and she doubted very much whether she would look back on her visit to Belsfield with much pleasure. For the story which half an hour’s questioning had got from Catherine had an unpromising sound to it.

Things did not bode well for her niece’s future happiness, even if – as she prayed would be the case – the late discovery in the shrubbery should prove to be quite unconcerned with her affairs.